RWBY, the web series that started the multimedia franchise (I'm told it has books and at least one videogame and stuff), is ten years old now. I've just resolved to sit down and watch the darn thing, and I feel like I need to take notes to work through my feelings, so why not let you read them?
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IWIW RWBY
- Thread starter michaelb958
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A Few Words Before We Start
michaelb958
(Verified Michael)
- Location
- Wherever I am, there I am
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
RWBY, the web series that started the multimedia franchise (I'm told it has books and at least one videogame and stuff), is ten years old now. I've just resolved to sit down and watch the darn thing, and I feel like I need to take notes to work through my feelings, so why not let you read them?
My feelings, you ask? Well, the way I discover new media is through fanfiction: I either fall down a TVTropes rabbit hole, trip over a fanfic's page, wonder what the context is, and get sucked in; or I read a crossover with something I already know about, wonder what's going on on the other side, and get sucked in. At some point I'll have read a critical mass of fanfiction and might decide to try the canon. This is often a recipe for disappointment. For example, I got into XCOM: Enemy Unknown (well before XCOM 2 was announced) through Stardust, and was consequently disappointed to discover that XCOM:EU only let you have one Skyranger. Not disappointed enough to stop playing it, mind you.
Anyway, in the process of consuming that critical mass of fanfiction I usually absorb a lot of fandom tropes, stations of canon, and - of course - spoilers. I had previously (something like five years ago) resolved to sit down and try watching RWBY, but for whatever reason I never did. ...Look, you expect me to remember reasons from five years ago?... I'm having another go mainly as a form of exposure therapy. I tripped over the fanfic scene again, have consumed a fair bit of it lately, and I've actually become unreasonably sad about that thing that I know happened to Pyrrha in Volume 3. (I knew about it before recently, but my brain happened, I guess?) After consultation, I decided the best way to deal with that is to face it head on and then 'smile because it happened', as it were; and then, if that doesn't work, write fully informed fixfic. And you can all hold me accountable. (And suffer with me. Or not - I'm not the boss of you.)
Anyway, ground rules!
My feelings, you ask? Well, the way I discover new media is through fanfiction: I either fall down a TVTropes rabbit hole, trip over a fanfic's page, wonder what the context is, and get sucked in; or I read a crossover with something I already know about, wonder what's going on on the other side, and get sucked in. At some point I'll have read a critical mass of fanfiction and might decide to try the canon. This is often a recipe for disappointment. For example, I got into XCOM: Enemy Unknown (well before XCOM 2 was announced) through Stardust, and was consequently disappointed to discover that XCOM:EU only let you have one Skyranger. Not disappointed enough to stop playing it, mind you.
Anyway, in the process of consuming that critical mass of fanfiction I usually absorb a lot of fandom tropes, stations of canon, and - of course - spoilers. I had previously (something like five years ago) resolved to sit down and try watching RWBY, but for whatever reason I never did. ...Look, you expect me to remember reasons from five years ago?... I'm having another go mainly as a form of exposure therapy. I tripped over the fanfic scene again, have consumed a fair bit of it lately, and I've actually become unreasonably sad about that thing that I know happened to Pyrrha in Volume 3. (I knew about it before recently, but my brain happened, I guess?) After consultation, I decided the best way to deal with that is to face it head on and then 'smile because it happened', as it were; and then, if that doesn't work, write fully informed fixfic. And you can all hold me accountable. (And suffer with me. Or not - I'm not the boss of you.)
Anyway, ground rules!
- My posting schedule is "we'll get there when we get there". Might be tomorrow, might be next month.
- Do not spoil episodes I have not yet watched. I might already know the spoiler - e.g. that thing that happened that I just mentioned - but I might not, and I think it's good form for a LW thread to stay 'in character' by waiting until an episode is watched to talk about its events. (I reserve the right to break character in {{double braces}} where it is sorely needed for clarity and/or very funny.)
- Maintain a generally positive attitude. We're here to watch RWBY; this may include throwing peanuts sometimes, but if you're just here to throw peanuts, that might get in the way of the watching.
Colour Trailers
michaelb958
(Verified Michael)
- Location
- Wherever I am, there I am
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Here's a little forum bonus feature: all-threadmark-types reader mode, so you can read in reader mode and still see everything in the order I posted it.
We open on what looks for all the world like Little Red Riding Hood visiting a snowy cenotaph, which would explain that feeling. I'm pretty sure it's a cenotaph because it would be a lot of work to dig an actual burial site into a clifftop like that.
Red stops emitting rose petals and turns to leave. Weirdly prominent crucifix, but OK. The cenotaph bears a rose symbol - a relation?
This site is really in the middle of nowhere, isn't it.
Suddenly, poorly animated wolves! About a dozen of them! Red disintegrates into rose petals as one of them claws her face off. Welp, that was quick, everybody go home - oh who am I kidding, we're only 30% through the trailer. Yep, another wolf looks up and spots her silhouetted against the full moon.
Goodness, that is an adorable face. If you're not distracted by that adorable face, you might notice the other distinguished lump of polygons in this detail shot, which is about to be unfurled into a really big gun.
Bang! Wolf dead. It's a bit gruesome. Only a little bit.
This is not your mother's Little Red Riding Hood. Unless your mother watched RWBY - I can't rule that out.
Red lands, allowing us to more clearly see that her gun is literally half her full height, and continues blasting. Three shots, three kills, and many emitted rose petals later, she unfurls the gun further. It's also a scythe! The wolves pick a champion, who approaches and gets trapped between the scythe blade and the gun stock. The scythe handle must be fully Red's height, I swear. Wolf Champion decides it has Red right where it wants her, so takes the time to growl/roar derisively. No, you're trapped in here with her. She fires the gun at nothing much and lets the recoil drive the scythe blade to bisect Wolf Champion. Like the others, it evaporates into rose petals as some sort of blood metaphor.
The surviving wolves aren't happy, and attempt to make their displeasure known at Close Range™. Red just enters gun turret mode, courtesy of anchoring the scythe point in the ground, and blasts them all away.
But look! More wolves!
No matter. Red is a combat prodigy, blasting away at wolves with 100% shot efficiency, using the recoil if not her own strength to cut up more with the scythe, acrobatting around to get into better positions, and occasionally kicking wolves in the face to get them into worse positions at the same time. OK, now she's hooked one with the scythe, swung around to stand on its back, and fired the gun into the ground to decapitate it and launch herself airborne; I'd say that's just showing off, except it's also a waste of the bullet.
A wolf pursues her into the air. It should have asked the others how that went for them. Oh wait, the others are dead, and now so are you.
Even as Red takes a solid hit to the scythe guard and is knocked away from the wolfpack, I can't help but think it was exactly what she wanted. Yeah, see, she just needed a moment to reload.
And now, the same thing but FASTER. So many speed lines and whooshing noises. So much cutting and shooting. Funny intercut of wolf bits and bullet casings as they arc through the air. So many dead wolves.
Red lands and adopts a dramatic pose, having cleared out entirely too many wolves for twenty-five seconds of combat. The wolf bits presumably all turned into petals, but the bullet casings rain down around her to provide one last moment of dissonance with the Little Red Riding Hood we're pretty sure we remember.
Well, that was a thing that happened.
It feels like there's about to be sads.
If you listen really closely, the announcer's words are mostly gibberish as far as I can tell, but the last two are pretty clearly "Weiss Schnee". That's her name, then.
Goodness, she looks lonely on that stage. Or maybe I've just been primed by that opening quote.
The song is also about being lonely.
Oh oh okay that is not how you fix it that is not how you fix it!
Weiss, narrowly escaping certain death by big h*cking sword, draws her own. It's way smaller, even relatively speaking. There's got to be an immature joke in there somewhere.
Evidently Weiss is a practitioner of a similar kind of combat artform to Red, given that sprint-turned-stab-turned-flip. (I checked so that you have no excuse to: her skirt passes the camera's view vector entirely between frames.) Weiss might not be nearly as skilled given all the nearly getting bisected by big h*cking sword, or perhaps a sword-statue is a more challenging opponent than a zillion wolves. Conservation of ninjutsu? Trouble is, it likely can damage her, but she clearly can't damage it, and that can only end one way.
The knockback on those blocks is incredible.
But what's this? Weiss casts a spell of haste, and now has a much easier time dodging. The second cast demonstrates that the accompanying symbol under her feet isn't just for show - she double-jumps off it. Hasty saber (I asked my brother, who does fencing, and he told me the one with the edge is the saber) moves to the big h*cking armour's knee might be accomplishing something, or might not. Weiss pulls the double-jump trick again, but the armour is expecting it and punches her into next Tuesday. Holy cow, that looked like it hurt.
But she's still singing on an otherwise empty stage? Is this a nightmare sequence?
The armour is generous enough to allow Weiss to recover and regain her feet. That did hurt, judging by the bleeding from above her eye.
And now she's taking this seriously. The red saber-glow makes the big h*cking sword just bounce off entirely; the blue one makes the floor sprout ice crystals, making the sword-wielder dodge or presumably be immobilised or something. It has another go with the big h*cking sword, but Weiss jumps onto the flat of the sword and uses yellow saber-glow to cut it in half down the middle. It's not about the size of the weapon, but the, uh, weapon's ability to glow interesting colours? The joke just doesn't work, and if yours does any of those things you should see a doctor.
Reduced to its fists, the big h*cking armour has a good go, but can't stop Weiss from readying another spell. She dodges fist, then casts, throwing it dramatically airborne. I remember just enough from when I played Smash Bros and/or League of Legends years ago to know that won't go well for it.
Weiss casts magic missile to pin the armour in place against empty air, casts something else, then does her own dramatic aerial leap and selects antimatter saber-glow to fatally missile-stab through it. It shatters on impact with the ground, because this isn't Red's traiier, this is Weiss' trailer.
Fade back out of the nightmare sequence to the stage, revealing that Weiss has a scar where that wound was so it must have been a 'based on a true story' nightmare if not an eidetic one. And it's the same stage! That can't be good for her mental state.
Speaking of "not ominous at all", something has taken a giant chomp out of the moon. Red fought beneath a full and completely circular moon. I thought Weiss performed under a circular moon, but rewatching and paying particular attention to its appearances makes clear it's missing a chunk of its edge - but it's still mostly whole, and even nearly convex. This opening shot shows us a clearly concave moon missing more than half its visible area, some of it trailing as moon debris chunks of immense size. Or maybe it's just moon phases and daylight, who knows.
After lingering on the shattered moon for a while to tell us it's important, the camera eventually pedestals down to show us a catgirl meditating on a rock. (I never could take this whole catgirl craze seriously, but it got even more difficult after I adopted some actual cats. I theorise that catgirl fans are just cat fans stewing in denial, excess horny, or both.) The camera also lingers here, for reasons I could imagine but then I'd have to wash my brain out with soap again. After long enough some guy wanders just partially into frame to tell her "it's time". He also names her as Blake, which is a good thing because I can't just call her Black, now can I. Blake waits a moment, subject to a lingering camera closeup, before acknowledging that it is, indeed, time. What is it time for? By the way they're now sprinting, it's time for us to find out!
They reach a cliff edge, and dramatically slide-and-leap down it to dramatically board a passing train on an elevated rail track. The train is styled like an old-style steam train, but it travels way faster than one of those ever has. It's also mega-scale judging by the relative size of Blake and masked Other Guy landing on top of it and then leaping forwards to the next car.
Other Guy slashes at something out of view - I think it's the lock on a hatch, because he then opens the hatch and jumps in. By the time Blake follows, Other Guy has seen enough to tell her they'll be doing it the hard way, which apparently means fighting a bunch of poorly-animated robots. Honestly, I had my fill of exhaustively squinting at fight choreography back there with Red, so this is going to be less content-rich. Fortunately this trailer is longer overall so I might output the same number of words.
Some of the robots have twin gun arms, others have twin sword arms. Other Guy has a sword whose scabbard can fire it like some kind of oversized blunt bullet, and also a gun in there somewhere; Blake has a sword with a ribbon, whose sheath is also a sword because why the h*ck not. It's all a bit of a blur, aside from the part where they can both deflect machine-gun fire with their swords, like they're cutting bullets out of the air in bullet time but without the bullet time.
They advance to a flatbed car where more robots advance upon them. Blake's sword and sheath both have ribbons and are also guns with which she does silly recoil tricks while using the ribbons to not have them fly off into the distance forever. Other Guy's sword sheath is definitely also a gun. In full accordance with conservation of ninjutsu, the robots are no match for these two.
In the next enclosed car, Other Guy thinks the contents of a crate (from which the camera looks out at them) are "perfect", and tells Blake to keep advancing while he "set[s] the charges", dismissing her concern about the train's crew. Blake's opinions on this dismissal are put on hold by the arrival of Spider-Bot of Doom 9000. In full accordance with conservation of ninjutsu, it's a tougher opponent.
Other Guy's name is Adam, apparently. {{Otherwise known as "OH, THAT'S THE ASSHOLE".}}
Blake and Adam take turns being shot at and knocked around by Spider-Bot of Doom 9000. "We need to get out of here," says Blake, right before 9000 merges its four gun-arms into one super-gun and knocks them out of there back onto the flatbed car. Adam shouts at Blake to buy him some time, yes he's sure. Blake buys him some time; then 9000 tries its super-gun again but Adam just tanks the whole blast by literally having his sword eat it. 9000 then attempts to resort to Close Range™; Adam annihilates it with his Final Smash, which clears most of the cargo off the flatbed too. Then he runs over to Blake on the adjacent other flatbed car, but for some reason stops short of the coupling. (Was it two flatbed cars the whole time? Plausible.) Blake just says "Goodbye", and - after a dramatic delay - severs the coupling, leaving Adam's half of the train behind. Adam could totally have jumped over that gap initially, but he just doesn't move at any point during this sequence.
Given Adam's association with red screens, I think the fade to black Blake-silhouette on red means we're seeing through his eyes here? Is he perhaps angry about it? An angry guy who has no qualms about manslaughter, how could this come back to bite anybody at all?
Motorcycle. I think that's about the opposite of pretentious. Seriously, have you ever seen anything pretentious involving a motorcycle?
Goldilocks - much better placeholder name than Yellow - dismounts her motorcycle and walks into a poorly-animated club. The only way to improve that sentence is to note that actually her chest entered first by a wide margin. (dips fingers in bleach, washes brain out with soap) Apparently that's not my kind of joke. Still a h*ck of a sentence there.
The ambient music (can we really call it ambient at this volume?) is the club mix of Red's trailer music.
Goldilocks walks up to the bar and orders a drink. The guy next to her thinks she's too young to be admitted. She thinks he's too old to be named Junior.
There's a flirt or two - (winces) Definitely don't call her "sweetheart". I'm not even sure it's safe to call her Goldilocks.
What's it called when Character A attempts to torture information out of Character B which B doesn't have but it's played for laughs?
Our motorcyclist, unbothered by threats of death from Junior's security, decides to actually catch files with honey this time, which works better if you haven't just poured the vinegar on. I have decided that I don't like her.
Apparently it was just a ruse to facepunch him into next Tuesday. Security are angry, but our motorcyclist deploys her gauntlets of - was that a spent shell. Is every weapon in this universe also a gun except for the ones that glow funny colours.
Motorcyclist is silhouetted against the main lighting in the exact same pose and point in the music as Red was silhouetted against the moon. I have typed "silhouette" more times in this post than I have in possibly my entire life beforehand.
And h*ck your entire dance floor.
Red fought wolves, Weiss fought a big h*cking suit of armour, Blake fought robots, Motorcyclist fights humans. Humans are tougher opponents, judging by the number of shots expended on each of them, but Motorcyclist has no major trouble fighting them off to the tune of the club mix of Weiss's trailer music, even when the DJ pulls out a submachine gun - they're not good enough at tracking her with it, so she gets to Close Range™ and punches him to incapacity.
At this point Melanie (in white) and Miltia (in red) arrive, conveniently referring to each other by name. They sound like stereotypical "valley girls", which is probably a deliberate artistic choice to create dissonance with their skills as the real security. Motorcyclist just reloads and starts fighting them both. They're each almost as dangerous as she is. Despite the DJ's head being thoroughly bounced off the mixer deck and much of the interior destroyed, the sound system is now playing the club mix of Blake's trailer music.
Melanie has bladed high heels. Sometimes I just don't even. Seeing as I'm not sure how you'd put a gun in a shoe, I can only presume they can glow funny colours, like those ones that lit up as you walked that you always wanted as a kid.
Some conservation of ninjutsu still applies, as Melanie is a more dangerous opponent once Miltia is discarded through another interior fixture. Nonetheless they are minibosses, fated for defeat, and Motorcyclist advances to the final boss: Junior with an MLRS bazooka and music not yet heard in these trailers. (Watch closely and you'll see Melanie getting up and leaving.)
The bazooka is an MLRS that fires the wimpiest rockets I've ever seen. People just don't realise how dangerous explosions are.
Which is more anime: deflecting bullets with your sword, or prematurely detonating rockets with your gauntleted fists?
The bazooka is also a telescoping club.
What? Motorcyclist is evolving! Now her hair's on fire! How does that even work?
RIP bazooka. But in exchange he tore some of her hair out. But, in accordance with conservation of ninjutsu, that just makes the rest of it more on fire.
And h*ck your entire club. Motorcyclist punches Junior out of the first-floor window for the KO, then follows to check he's actually out. Also there is Red. Remember her?
"Yay?" she says, presumably sarcastically but I'll need more context. "Is that you?" she asks, confusing me immensely.
"Yang?" she asks, "is that you?"
{{The end of "Yang" is barely pronounced at all. If I knew as little as I pretended to, I'd be totally unable to realise it was a name - see above strikethrough.}}
Motorcyclist, now known to be named Yang, addresses Red as "sis".
Red has an unusually high-pitched voice. I'm not sure if it's irritating or adorable.
This shot composition leaves me with so very many questions. Firstly, are there two moons (one intact, one half-shattered), or one moon (half-shattered) and an incredibly dim setting sun, or one moon (half-shattered) and some tall spherical artificial light, or some other arrangement entirely?
No Yang, it's not a long story. You assaulted a guy before you asked him the one question you came to ask him, and then picked a needless fight with him and literally all his goons, some of whom didn't even use the generic goon character model.
Next time: Some get cookies; some toss cookies.
Red Trailer
Did anyone else feel like someone walked over a grave?
We open on what looks for all the world like Little Red Riding Hood visiting a snowy cenotaph, which would explain that feeling. I'm pretty sure it's a cenotaph because it would be a lot of work to dig an actual burial site into a clifftop like that.
Red stops emitting rose petals and turns to leave. Weirdly prominent crucifix, but OK. The cenotaph bears a rose symbol - a relation?
This site is really in the middle of nowhere, isn't it.
Suddenly, poorly animated wolves! About a dozen of them! Red disintegrates into rose petals as one of them claws her face off. Welp, that was quick, everybody go home - oh who am I kidding, we're only 30% through the trailer. Yep, another wolf looks up and spots her silhouetted against the full moon.
Goodness, that is an adorable face. If you're not distracted by that adorable face, you might notice the other distinguished lump of polygons in this detail shot, which is about to be unfurled into a really big gun.
Bang! Wolf dead. It's a bit gruesome. Only a little bit.
This is not your mother's Little Red Riding Hood. Unless your mother watched RWBY - I can't rule that out.
Red lands, allowing us to more clearly see that her gun is literally half her full height, and continues blasting. Three shots, three kills, and many emitted rose petals later, she unfurls the gun further. It's also a scythe! The wolves pick a champion, who approaches and gets trapped between the scythe blade and the gun stock. The scythe handle must be fully Red's height, I swear. Wolf Champion decides it has Red right where it wants her, so takes the time to growl/roar derisively. No, you're trapped in here with her. She fires the gun at nothing much and lets the recoil drive the scythe blade to bisect Wolf Champion. Like the others, it evaporates into rose petals as some sort of blood metaphor.
The surviving wolves aren't happy, and attempt to make their displeasure known at Close Range™. Red just enters gun turret mode, courtesy of anchoring the scythe point in the ground, and blasts them all away.
But look! More wolves!
No matter. Red is a combat prodigy, blasting away at wolves with 100% shot efficiency, using the recoil if not her own strength to cut up more with the scythe, acrobatting around to get into better positions, and occasionally kicking wolves in the face to get them into worse positions at the same time. OK, now she's hooked one with the scythe, swung around to stand on its back, and fired the gun into the ground to decapitate it and launch herself airborne; I'd say that's just showing off, except it's also a waste of the bullet.
A wolf pursues her into the air. It should have asked the others how that went for them. Oh wait, the others are dead, and now so are you.
Even as Red takes a solid hit to the scythe guard and is knocked away from the wolfpack, I can't help but think it was exactly what she wanted. Yeah, see, she just needed a moment to reload.
And now, the same thing but FASTER. So many speed lines and whooshing noises. So much cutting and shooting. Funny intercut of wolf bits and bullet casings as they arc through the air. So many dead wolves.
Red lands and adopts a dramatic pose, having cleared out entirely too many wolves for twenty-five seconds of combat. The wolf bits presumably all turned into petals, but the bullet casings rain down around her to provide one last moment of dissonance with the Little Red Riding Hood we're pretty sure we remember.
Well, that was a thing that happened.
White Trailer
It's true. It's literally why I started doing this.
It feels like there's about to be sads.
If you listen really closely, the announcer's words are mostly gibberish as far as I can tell, but the last two are pretty clearly "Weiss Schnee". That's her name, then.
Goodness, she looks lonely on that stage. Or maybe I've just been primed by that opening quote.
The song is also about being lonely.
Oh oh okay that is not how you fix it that is not how you fix it!
Weiss, narrowly escaping certain death by big h*cking sword, draws her own. It's way smaller, even relatively speaking. There's got to be an immature joke in there somewhere.
Evidently Weiss is a practitioner of a similar kind of combat artform to Red, given that sprint-turned-stab-turned-flip. (I checked so that you have no excuse to: her skirt passes the camera's view vector entirely between frames.) Weiss might not be nearly as skilled given all the nearly getting bisected by big h*cking sword, or perhaps a sword-statue is a more challenging opponent than a zillion wolves. Conservation of ninjutsu? Trouble is, it likely can damage her, but she clearly can't damage it, and that can only end one way.
The knockback on those blocks is incredible.
But what's this? Weiss casts a spell of haste, and now has a much easier time dodging. The second cast demonstrates that the accompanying symbol under her feet isn't just for show - she double-jumps off it. Hasty saber (I asked my brother, who does fencing, and he told me the one with the edge is the saber) moves to the big h*cking armour's knee might be accomplishing something, or might not. Weiss pulls the double-jump trick again, but the armour is expecting it and punches her into next Tuesday. Holy cow, that looked like it hurt.
But she's still singing on an otherwise empty stage? Is this a nightmare sequence?
The armour is generous enough to allow Weiss to recover and regain her feet. That did hurt, judging by the bleeding from above her eye.
And now she's taking this seriously. The red saber-glow makes the big h*cking sword just bounce off entirely; the blue one makes the floor sprout ice crystals, making the sword-wielder dodge or presumably be immobilised or something. It has another go with the big h*cking sword, but Weiss jumps onto the flat of the sword and uses yellow saber-glow to cut it in half down the middle. It's not about the size of the weapon, but the, uh, weapon's ability to glow interesting colours? The joke just doesn't work, and if yours does any of those things you should see a doctor.
Reduced to its fists, the big h*cking armour has a good go, but can't stop Weiss from readying another spell. She dodges fist, then casts, throwing it dramatically airborne. I remember just enough from when I played Smash Bros and/or League of Legends years ago to know that won't go well for it.
Weiss casts magic missile to pin the armour in place against empty air, casts something else, then does her own dramatic aerial leap and selects antimatter saber-glow to fatally missile-stab through it. It shatters on impact with the ground, because this isn't Red's traiier, this is Weiss' trailer.
Fade back out of the nightmare sequence to the stage, revealing that Weiss has a scar where that wound was so it must have been a 'based on a true story' nightmare if not an eidetic one. And it's the same stage! That can't be good for her mental state.
Black Trailer
Well that's not ominous at all.
Speaking of "not ominous at all", something has taken a giant chomp out of the moon. Red fought beneath a full and completely circular moon. I thought Weiss performed under a circular moon, but rewatching and paying particular attention to its appearances makes clear it's missing a chunk of its edge - but it's still mostly whole, and even nearly convex. This opening shot shows us a clearly concave moon missing more than half its visible area, some of it trailing as moon debris chunks of immense size. Or maybe it's just moon phases and daylight, who knows.
After lingering on the shattered moon for a while to tell us it's important, the camera eventually pedestals down to show us a catgirl meditating on a rock. (I never could take this whole catgirl craze seriously, but it got even more difficult after I adopted some actual cats. I theorise that catgirl fans are just cat fans stewing in denial, excess horny, or both.) The camera also lingers here, for reasons I could imagine but then I'd have to wash my brain out with soap again. After long enough some guy wanders just partially into frame to tell her "it's time". He also names her as Blake, which is a good thing because I can't just call her Black, now can I. Blake waits a moment, subject to a lingering camera closeup, before acknowledging that it is, indeed, time. What is it time for? By the way they're now sprinting, it's time for us to find out!
They reach a cliff edge, and dramatically slide-and-leap down it to dramatically board a passing train on an elevated rail track. The train is styled like an old-style steam train, but it travels way faster than one of those ever has. It's also mega-scale judging by the relative size of Blake and masked Other Guy landing on top of it and then leaping forwards to the next car.
Other Guy slashes at something out of view - I think it's the lock on a hatch, because he then opens the hatch and jumps in. By the time Blake follows, Other Guy has seen enough to tell her they'll be doing it the hard way, which apparently means fighting a bunch of poorly-animated robots. Honestly, I had my fill of exhaustively squinting at fight choreography back there with Red, so this is going to be less content-rich. Fortunately this trailer is longer overall so I might output the same number of words.
Some of the robots have twin gun arms, others have twin sword arms. Other Guy has a sword whose scabbard can fire it like some kind of oversized blunt bullet, and also a gun in there somewhere; Blake has a sword with a ribbon, whose sheath is also a sword because why the h*ck not. It's all a bit of a blur, aside from the part where they can both deflect machine-gun fire with their swords, like they're cutting bullets out of the air in bullet time but without the bullet time.
They advance to a flatbed car where more robots advance upon them. Blake's sword and sheath both have ribbons and are also guns with which she does silly recoil tricks while using the ribbons to not have them fly off into the distance forever. Other Guy's sword sheath is definitely also a gun. In full accordance with conservation of ninjutsu, the robots are no match for these two.
In the next enclosed car, Other Guy thinks the contents of a crate (from which the camera looks out at them) are "perfect", and tells Blake to keep advancing while he "set[s] the charges", dismissing her concern about the train's crew. Blake's opinions on this dismissal are put on hold by the arrival of Spider-Bot of Doom 9000. In full accordance with conservation of ninjutsu, it's a tougher opponent.
Other Guy's name is Adam, apparently. {{Otherwise known as "OH, THAT'S THE ASSHOLE".}}
Blake and Adam take turns being shot at and knocked around by Spider-Bot of Doom 9000. "We need to get out of here," says Blake, right before 9000 merges its four gun-arms into one super-gun and knocks them out of there back onto the flatbed car. Adam shouts at Blake to buy him some time, yes he's sure. Blake buys him some time; then 9000 tries its super-gun again but Adam just tanks the whole blast by literally having his sword eat it. 9000 then attempts to resort to Close Range™; Adam annihilates it with his Final Smash, which clears most of the cargo off the flatbed too. Then he runs over to Blake on the adjacent other flatbed car, but for some reason stops short of the coupling. (Was it two flatbed cars the whole time? Plausible.) Blake just says "Goodbye", and - after a dramatic delay - severs the coupling, leaving Adam's half of the train behind. Adam could totally have jumped over that gap initially, but he just doesn't move at any point during this sequence.
Given Adam's association with red screens, I think the fade to black Blake-silhouette on red means we're seeing through his eyes here? Is he perhaps angry about it? An angry guy who has no qualms about manslaughter, how could this come back to bite anybody at all?
Yellow Trailer
That's so pretentious it's even forgotten to have hyphens.
Motorcycle. I think that's about the opposite of pretentious. Seriously, have you ever seen anything pretentious involving a motorcycle?
Goldilocks - much better placeholder name than Yellow - dismounts her motorcycle and walks into a poorly-animated club. The only way to improve that sentence is to note that actually her chest entered first by a wide margin. (dips fingers in bleach, washes brain out with soap) Apparently that's not my kind of joke. Still a h*ck of a sentence there.
The ambient music (can we really call it ambient at this volume?) is the club mix of Red's trailer music.
Goldilocks walks up to the bar and orders a drink. The guy next to her thinks she's too young to be admitted. She thinks he's too old to be named Junior.
There's a flirt or two - (winces) Definitely don't call her "sweetheart". I'm not even sure it's safe to call her Goldilocks.
What's it called when Character A attempts to torture information out of Character B which B doesn't have but it's played for laughs?
Our motorcyclist, unbothered by threats of death from Junior's security, decides to actually catch files with honey this time, which works better if you haven't just poured the vinegar on. I have decided that I don't like her.
Apparently it was just a ruse to facepunch him into next Tuesday. Security are angry, but our motorcyclist deploys her gauntlets of - was that a spent shell. Is every weapon in this universe also a gun except for the ones that glow funny colours.
Motorcyclist is silhouetted against the main lighting in the exact same pose and point in the music as Red was silhouetted against the moon. I have typed "silhouette" more times in this post than I have in possibly my entire life beforehand.
And h*ck your entire dance floor.
Red fought wolves, Weiss fought a big h*cking suit of armour, Blake fought robots, Motorcyclist fights humans. Humans are tougher opponents, judging by the number of shots expended on each of them, but Motorcyclist has no major trouble fighting them off to the tune of the club mix of Weiss's trailer music, even when the DJ pulls out a submachine gun - they're not good enough at tracking her with it, so she gets to Close Range™ and punches him to incapacity.
At this point Melanie (in white) and Miltia (in red) arrive, conveniently referring to each other by name. They sound like stereotypical "valley girls", which is probably a deliberate artistic choice to create dissonance with their skills as the real security. Motorcyclist just reloads and starts fighting them both. They're each almost as dangerous as she is. Despite the DJ's head being thoroughly bounced off the mixer deck and much of the interior destroyed, the sound system is now playing the club mix of Blake's trailer music.
Melanie has bladed high heels. Sometimes I just don't even. Seeing as I'm not sure how you'd put a gun in a shoe, I can only presume they can glow funny colours, like those ones that lit up as you walked that you always wanted as a kid.
Some conservation of ninjutsu still applies, as Melanie is a more dangerous opponent once Miltia is discarded through another interior fixture. Nonetheless they are minibosses, fated for defeat, and Motorcyclist advances to the final boss: Junior with an MLRS bazooka and music not yet heard in these trailers. (Watch closely and you'll see Melanie getting up and leaving.)
The bazooka is an MLRS that fires the wimpiest rockets I've ever seen. People just don't realise how dangerous explosions are.
Which is more anime: deflecting bullets with your sword, or prematurely detonating rockets with your gauntleted fists?
The bazooka is also a telescoping club.
What? Motorcyclist is evolving! Now her hair's on fire! How does that even work?
RIP bazooka. But in exchange he tore some of her hair out. But, in accordance with conservation of ninjutsu, that just makes the rest of it more on fire.
And h*ck your entire club. Motorcyclist punches Junior out of the first-floor window for the KO, then follows to check he's actually out. Also there is Red. Remember her?
"Yang?" she asks, "is that you?"
{{The end of "Yang" is barely pronounced at all. If I knew as little as I pretended to, I'd be totally unable to realise it was a name - see above strikethrough.}}
Motorcyclist, now known to be named Yang, addresses Red as "sis".
Red has an unusually high-pitched voice. I'm not sure if it's irritating or adorable.
This shot composition leaves me with so very many questions. Firstly, are there two moons (one intact, one half-shattered), or one moon (half-shattered) and an incredibly dim setting sun, or one moon (half-shattered) and some tall spherical artificial light, or some other arrangement entirely?
No Yang, it's not a long story. You assaulted a guy before you asked him the one question you came to ask him, and then picked a needless fight with him and literally all his goons, some of whom didn't even use the generic goon character model.
Next time: Some get cookies; some toss cookies.
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- Pronouns
- He
With it being ten years, it's just barely possible that someone could be reading this who was born after RWBY came out and whose mom liked the show.
michaelb958
(Verified Michael)
- Location
- Wherever I am, there I am
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
It also cannot be ruled out that somebody became a parent before they became a RWBY fan.
V01C01 Ruby Rose
michaelb958
(Verified Michael)
- Location
- Wherever I am, there I am
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
V01C01 Ruby Rose
Only this episode is available on YouTube. To watch along with future episodes, you'll need an account on Rooster Teeth's website. Fret not, you don't even have to pay them (unless you want to). Simply sign away an email address, a password, a ReCAPTCHA, and your agreement to the terms and conditions that we all know nobody reads. Then head to a RWBY series page (divided by episode Chapter or by season Volume) to start with the watching.
We start with a history lesson. Interesting choice.
The Creatures of Grim {{Grimm}} are Repelled with Dust, yadda yadda. This episode is twelve minutes and twenty seconds long, and we've now spent a minute and twenty seconds just on this history lesson.
OK, so that moon is definitely shattered. The camera then tilts down to some guys walking down a street as the history narrator continues. The lead guy exudes actual-character energy (and he smokes, ew), but the rest are generic goons. The other folks who happen to be out and about on this dark night seem to think they're all trouble. The narrator has also taken a turn for the sinister - does she have it out for the civilisation she's just told us about? Another narrator attempts to rebut as the camera teleports into a Dust shop and pedestals down from the ceiling, and as he says "...smaller, more honest soul" it reaches minimum pedestal in front of I think that's Red, hidden in the back reading a weapons catalogue.
The gang enters the shop and inspects the array of I presume those are Dust crystals in front of the shopkeeper. The crystals don't look very impressive - perhaps they're poorly animated. Actual Character adopts the role of Good
As the gang collects the Dust - crystalline and otherwise - a goon spots some weirdo in the magazine section at the back, and decides to corral them with his big sword (not an innuendo - I hope), maybe for mugging, maybe just to ensure they don't interfere. Oh no they've got headphones on they can't hear him. He presses the matter at Close Range™. Oh hey it is Red. Oh hey he definitely is going for the mugging:
I'm sure now. Adorable.
It is now time for michaelb958's Tangentially Related Storytime.
Once upon a time in 2010, an Indian man named Bishnu Shrestha had recently retired from the army, where he had been part of a Gurkha rifle regiment. The Gurkhas trace their institutional lineage back to the British colonisation of India, where they sufficiently impressed the British in combat (against the British, to be clear) to be kept on as auxiliaries afterwards, so these are not just any random guys. That September, he was riding the Maurya Express when, as it passed through West Bengal, somewhere between thirty and forty train robbers boarded and started taking everybody's valuables.
According to the Times of India, 45-year-old Shrestha was asleep at first; some of the thirty train robbers woke him up and demanded his valuables. He shouted that he was a soldier, so they went to find easier prey, which was nearby. When they tried snatching a baby and the mother's necklace, he decided it was worth fighting. Long story short, Shrestha and his khukuri knife (a Gurkha mainstay) took on dozens of train robbers, some of whom had guns, and nearly won, injuring at least three. Eventually, they disarmed him and cut up his hand with his own knife; that was the end of any resistance to the robbery.
According to some other publications, 35-year-old Shrestha was asleep at first; some of the forty train robbers woke him up and demanded his valuables. He handed them over; it wasn't worth fighting. When they decided to rape the teenager seated nearby, he decided it was worth fighting. Long story short, Shrestha and his khukuri knife (a Gurkha mainstay) took on dozens of train robbers, some of whom had guns, and won, killing three and injuring many more.
Sources agree that several of the robbers were arrested, at least some of the valuables were recovered, and Shresthan fully recovered from his injuries (whatever they were) and received at least one medal.
The point I'm trying to make here is that it's easy to overextend your robbery and stumble across someone who will fight back. Cut to Good Gangster and Bad Gangster being rather taken aback as Big Sword Goon involuntarily hurtles back past them and into the front wall. Bad Gangster, to his credit, immediately realises this could be a problem. To his debit, his response is just to advance on Red, point his gun, and shout "Freeze!". So Red takes him out the front window. She fares better. Good Gangster (that's getting really oxymoronic so I'll abbreviate it to GG) and the other goons watch on as she stands, like videogame protagonists who have just walked into the boss arena and tripped the little introductory cutscene where the boss enters and shows off how dangerous they look. In the middle, Red scowls at them; it's adorable. At the end, she stops her music. It took me about twenty rewatches of her twirling her her-sized scythe-gun to work out that her headphones migrated from her neck to her off-hand somewhere in the middle of said twirl.
GG sends in the goons. Just like that, the roles flip. Now Red is the videogame protagonist who effortlessly smacks them down.
"You were worth every cent, truly you were," GG mutters to himself. While declaring his imminent departure to Red (he even calls her that), he drops his cigarette on the ground, puts it out with the end of his cane (ew, smokers), reveals his cane is also a gun (of course it is), and reveals it has the world's most adorable iron sight on it (clearly he already spent too much time near Red). Then he fires the world's slowest and most explosive tracer round. There's no point to the iron sight if your round moves that slowly - by the time it reaches a distance where a sight would be useful, your target's moved! What the round lacks in velocity, it makes up for in explosion, and Red has to put a bit of work into blocking and recovering - enough that she loses track of him. But fear not, he hasn't escaped entirely.
She even checks that the shopkeeper is okay. Completely adorable.
It is well-known that red is the fastest colour, so naturally Red reaches the rooftop only moments after GG does. GG isn't impressed, but fortunately his ride's here. It's a tiltjet. Those are pretty cool. More importantly, they have enough lights to effectively blind Red. GG, safely aboard, throws some red pseudo-grenade at Red, sets it off with another of the world's slowest tracers, and whoops in exhilaration at the attempted murder he just committed. I say attempted because not only are we less than halfway through the episode, but exactly this kind of thing happened to Red back in her trailer.
Sure enough, Purple Magical Librarian has turned up just in time to cast Shield and keep the explosion from harming either of them. She follows up with a Weiss-style multi-magic-missile that buffets the tiltjet. GG warns the pilot that "We got a huntress!". The pilot goes to handle the situation, leaving GG to take over piloting. Librarian's next spell summons a localised thunderstorm; deadly sharpened hailstones embed themselves into the fuselage. One of them penetrates the windscreen and nearly takes GG's head off. Then the pilot enters the fight, and the ominous choir joins the soundtrack.
If I had to summarise Pilot's fighting style in a word, it would be 'volcanic'. Firstly because of all the fire, explosions, and ex nihilo deadly sharpened debris; secondly because volcanoes cannot be overcome. Despite the best efforts of Librarian telekinetically manipulating the debris into a terrifying spear (nearly taking GG's head off again), and Red's supporting gunfire after that fails, the dastardly duo easily make enough space to set the tiltjet to cruise and make their escape.
Did I mention Librarian appears to wield a riding crop? I wonder what funny colours it glows.
As the dust settles, Red switches to her next priority. "You're a huntress?" She forges on despite being glared at. "Can I have your autograph?!"
Completely adorable.
Smash cut to an interrogation room. No, no you cannot have her autograph.
Librarian is unimpressed by Red playing vigilante, and unmoved by Red protesting that "they started it". How old is Red, anyway?
When Librarian slaps you on the wrist, she uses the riding crop. Made even more painful by the painfully adorable face beforehand at the mention of a pat on the back, which did not actually happen.
On the one hand, the next guy through the interrogation room door brings cookies, and he tells us Red's name: it is Ruby Rose. Finally, the episode gives us a name! (Two synonyms for red? How obvious can you get? ...Weiss and Blake sound awfully close to 'white' and 'black'. I'm willing to bet that 'Yang' translates to 'yellow' somehow.) On the other hand, the next thing he says is "You... ...have silver eyes." Okay, sure, what does that have to do with anything?
Librarian, overruled on Ruby's punishment, is now reduced to acting as an A/V tech. It just isn't her day today, is it.
Ruby's scythe-gun is "one of the most dangerous weapons ever designed". Cookie Guy is apparently satisfied by where she learned to use it, for he hands over the cookies. Ruby eats one. Ruby eating a cookie transcends wolves, robots, Dust crystals, and goodness knows what else as the most poorly-animated thing in the show so far. Ruby, undeterred, scarfs down the rest of them in literally seconds (multiple per second), but not quite in time to confirm that her uncle ...crow? {{Qrow}} taught her. Ha ha, "took me under his wing".
See, even Cookie Guy agrees Ruby's adorable! But I don't like how he implies that's mutually exclusive with warrior training.
Ruby wants. to be. a huntress. She's training at Signal Academy, and in two years, she'll graduate and be applying to Beacon Academy, where her sister is already about to start... I consume a lot more written media than I do audiovisual media; I mention this because this is possibly the first time I've actually seen/heard this kind of rapid rambling from a character instead of just reading about it. Reading's neat and all, but text is an inevitably lossy medium for speech - tone, timing, and many other details are left behind at the keyboard and must be reconstructed in the reader's mind. My point is, it's utterly adorable. Somehow, Librarian is still unimpressed.
"Do you know who I am?" asks the man whom Ruby is about to identify as Professor Ozpin, headmaster of Beacon Academy. So yes, she does.
Utterly adorable.
Ozpin glances at Librarian in a consultative manner, and is unmoved by how unimpressed she is.
Easiest admissions process I've ever even heard of.
The transition that follows is not a cut but a wipe; a poorly-animated wipe, at that. It nonetheless has a similar effect to a smash cut: Suddenly (from our perspective beyond the camera), Ruby is being affectionately strangled by apparently-her-sister, Yang, who is considerably more in many dimensions - most notably, visible excitement - than Ruby herself.
Ruby is not interested in being the bees' knees, or any other kind of knees. {{I've heard the "normal girl with normal knees" quote plenty, but never the first half that gives it any kind of context.}} Neither does she want to be seen as special because she's suddenly been moved up two years. I'd say she's basically my spirit animal, but for two major problems: Firstly, given her scythe-gun skills, she's more like the spirit animal my spirit animal wishes it could be. (There's got to be a trans joke in there somewhere.) Secondly, Yang "Flirt Close Enough To Grip-Sack-And-Twist" Rose {{wrong family name}} is my spirit animal's natural predator.
A conveniently-timed too-loud-to-be-missed news broadcast tells us GG's name: "Roman Torchwick". Change that to something vaguely sensible and I will stop complaining about Little Miss Red Red. The news anchor, who is even more poorly animated than Ruby eating cookies, then starts mentioning a faunus civil rights protest disrupted by the White Fang. From how obviously the writers shoehorned that in, I'm guessing we'll learn what's going on there in what they (the writers) consider to be due course. The holographic TV tuned to the news channel is then replaced by a hologram of Librarian, who names herself as Glynda Goodwitch (what is with the names?!), tells the student intake how privileged (affectionate) they all are, and fades back out just in time for a great view out the window. Turns out they're on an airship! Ruby, naturally, views the wrong thing.
It has just sunk in that apart from Ruby and Yang, everyone on the airship is a black silhouette. Animation? What's that?
Enter, stage right, the comedic relief (the only other character with a character model), because sickness is funny![/sarcasm] Luckily, the animators haven't even tried to actually animate (poorly or not) throwing up, because I am the most squeamish person you'll ever hear of - I can, and have, been sick from the mere thought of things that are produced and/or meant to stay inside the body, whether or not there is any realistic possibility of their departure. (Then what am I doing watching this violent show? That is an excellent question that demonstrates your deep understanding of the subject matter. Never ask it again.) In fact, the animators have simultaneously done the writers' bidding here in setting up some more Comedy™, because after the final cut to the airship exterior it is a surprise to us as well as to Yang that he got some on her shoes.
Roll titles. I do believe that is the song Ruby was listening to on her headphones. (It's a banger, as the cool kids might have said on the Internet at some point.) Prominent depictions include:
- Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang, obviously. (It can't possibly be a coincidence that their names acronym to "RWBY".) They get a lot of time spent on them.
- Someone exactly like Ruby except wearing white instead of red, with Ruby near the rose (Rose?) cenotaph. They dissolve into white petals, which probably isn't a blood metaphor unless they're already long dead - a distinct possibility, given the cenotaph.
- Some Creatures of Grim, I think?
- Roman Torchwick and the Goons, which would be an okay name for a band.
- Volcanic Pilot and Two Shadow Figures, ditto.
- I think that's Comedic Relief, staring up at a statue (if they crammed that into the titles then it's probably important). Then he gains some companions we haven't seen yet. There's a real teamwork theme going on here.
- Ozpin and Goodwitch.
- Most of them again at the end.
Next time: Planet Comedy, population 2.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
Something to note about the characters in the show. (I don't think these are spoilrs, but I'm going to tag them anyway so you can decide if you want to know)
1. The vast majority of them have some sort of allusion to them. Predominantly fairy tales, but other kinds of stories as well and even historical figures. (There's even a few based on memes). I'm sure you can guess who Ruby with her Red Hood is based on.
2. Almost every character's name is a reference to a color of some kind. Some of them are obvious, some are a big stretch
1. The vast majority of them have some sort of allusion to them. Predominantly fairy tales, but other kinds of stories as well and even historical figures. (There's even a few based on memes). I'm sure you can guess who Ruby with her Red Hood is based on.
2. Almost every character's name is a reference to a color of some kind. Some of them are obvious, some are a big stretch
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yang does not translate to yellow. There are many possible Yangs, including goat and ocean, but in this case they apparently meant the one that is part of the word for Sun (it's more of a stretch than most)
michaelb958
(Verified Michael)
- Location
- Wherever I am, there I am
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
It is something of a stretch, but sun basically means yellow in common usage, so I'm basically right. (I do not say this to detract from the translation help. Thank you.)
V01C02 & V01C03 The Shining Beacon
michaelb958
(Verified Michael)
- Location
- Wherever I am, there I am
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
V01C02 The Shining Beacon
Chapter 1 was twelve minutes and twenty seconds long, minus history lesson and end titles. Chapter 2 is six minutes and fifteen seconds - barely half the runtime. I was concerned that the minute-plus title sequence would sharply cut into that runtime. Fortunately, they have a thirty-second abbreviated version, minus all the crew names:
- Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang. Blake gets short-changed of screentime in the first ten seconds.
- White-Clad Ruby Who Disintegrates.
- The presumed Creatures of Grim.
- Roman and the Goons.
- Volcano and the Shadows.
- Comedic Relief and the Companions.
- Only in the combination shot at the end do Ozpin and Goodwitch appear.
The airship - actually a blockier-looking tiltjet - lands. First down the ramp is Comedic Relief, finally finding a bin to throw up into. Did the passenger-carrying tiltjet have no bathrooms or bins or anything?
Beacon Academy appears to have a very large architecture budget.
I thought Ruby was subject to an animation glitch or two during her rambling back in the interrogation room. The animators now make clear that it was completely intentional by having her run the gamut of fascinating animation styles as she fangirls over the weaponry that, we are assured, some of the people walking around are carrying. (We can barely tell - they're all black silhouettes.) Weaponry is serious business to Ruby Rose.
I needed the subtitles to tell me the word "swoon"; it just flattened itself into syllable soup. That happened a time or two last episode as well. Sometimes I feel like the voice acting is trying to outdo the animation at being poorly done.
There's really no way Ruby can answer that without deploying her own weapon in a single offscreen metallic noise.
Mood, Ruby.
Yang then has her own go at packing maximum words into minimum time. Y'see, her friends the silhouettes are here, bye! Ruby is comedically dizzied by their rapid departure. Unclear whether they were actually Yang's friends or she was just making up an excuse to throw Ruby into the deep end.
And the animation reclaims its poorly-made crown. Under the constraints so far observed, there's not really a good way to animate Yang and the Silhouettes leaving at speed, but this is unquestionably a bad one. Are the animators trying to tell us help they're stuck in an animation factory? I'm trying really hard not to spend the entire time throwing peanuts at the fifth wall, but they're really not making it easy.
...I think the problem I have with the silhouette people (I am at risk of semantic satiation on that word) is that I'm subconsciously comparing them to background ponies, which were how My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic filled out scenes which had to be crowded but didn't call for enough notable characters to crowd them. MLP:FiM had a head start here: it's animated in a sufficiently cartoonish art style that it didn't threaten suspension of disbelief when many background ponies reused a few common body types, reducing the animation costs of a crowd thereof. If RWBY wanted to have background people it would need to put much more resources into animating them to avoid having a crowd of statues, clones, or immigrants from the uncanny valley - resources Rooster Teeth might not have had.
Anyway, Ruby is about to collapse backwards onto something she hasn't seen and we can barely see.
It involves a pile of cases. This cannot end well.
I think that's Weiss Schnee. And so her first line of substance is "Sorry?! Do you have any idea of the damage you could have caused?!" I might be a bit voice-blind, because I'm having a little trouble differentiating her voice from Ruby's when visual cues aren't available.
The cases are full of Dust, aparently from her family's quarry. She lists the four types of Dust for our benefit. For some reason she shakes some red (Fire, I think) Dust around while she's talking; it can't possibly be accidental. The small cloud of red Dust induces Ruby to sneeze, and then takes the opportunity to brew up in a fireball that envelops and comedically blackens both of them. The vial still containing the rest of it goes flying away; speaking of black, it somehow remains intact by the time it rolls to a stop at Blake's feet. Now I definitely have an idea of the damage that could have been caused.
Weiss, excoriating Ruby, moves past her apparent intelligence and onto her apparent age. Ruby takes it better than I was expecting, because I was expecting her to curl up into a ball. I say again, spirit animal my spirit animal wishes it could be.
Enter Blake, who has an axe to grind with the Schnee Dust Company. It looks like she's wearing a bow in addition to - or perhaps instead of - actually having cat ears.
Exit Weiss, fuming. Some poor bastards with character models pick up the Dust cases after her.
Exit Blake while Ruby isn't looking. How rude and soul-crushing.
Mood, Ruby.
Enter Comedic Relief, whose actual name is Jaune. Ruby immediately identifies him as "the guy who threw up on the ship". How to make friends and influence people, Ruby.
The camera tilts down onto the two of them walking along, and Jaune says something that implies a conversation is in progress. This is a common audiovisual storytelling trick to indicate that a conversation is in progress. Usually, the speech starts immediately at low volume and fades up, to reinforce the impression that we, the audience, are entering the conversation as it is in progress. Here, the camera runs with only background music for fully seven seconds before Jaune abruptly starts talking at full volume, so the trick falls flat.
"Oh yeah? What if I called you Crater Face?" How to make friends and influence people, Jaune.
Luckily, he didn't spout his catchphrase immediately upon meeting Ruby, or she would probably have just left. Unluckily, he does now so we're subjected to it anyway. Suffer with us, non-watching readers:
Faced with this conversational dead-end in a blind alley in the bad part of town at midnight, Ruby resorts to her favourite topic - weapons - complete with unprompted demonstration of Crescent Rose. Look, all I'm saying is we know where the animation work went. Jaune isn't equipped to understand the full details of how it's also a gun. Yes, Ruby really did simplify to "it's also a gun".
Jaune brings to the party a sword and collapsible shield, the latter of which he comedically fumbles at the slightest provocation by Ruby. I wonder what funny colours they glow. At least he understands that collapsing the shield doesn't reduce its weight, although I think they both undersell the utility of reducing its volume for transport.
Ruby made Crescent Rose herself. Not only is she a combat prodigy, she's also a gunsmithing prodigy. Jaune, on the other hand, is using the same gear as his great-great-grandfather who used it in "the war". This implies at least that a generation number can uniquely identify the war in question, at most that there hasn't been a war since. What a world.
Crescent Rose apparently sucked up the entire animation budget for this episode: they even have to go to a head-and-shoulders shot of Jaune rather than animate him sheathing the sword.
What Jaune's mum always says is that "strangers are just friends you haven't met yet". That would have been a much better catchphrase for him to adopt.
Fade to black as they both realise they're lost. Ruby agrees that there isn't so much as a recognisable landmark. Come on, even I saw the big tall tower in the middle of the overly invested-in architecture.
Roll credits. This song fragment is less inspirational and much more concerning.
Next time: There's a cat, and a fight, but it's not a catfight.
V01C03 The Shining Beacon, Part Two
Oh I see, they're padding the episode count by dividing each twelve-minute episode in half.
Ruby and Jaune, presumably unlost, walk into an assembly hall where many people already are. One of the benefits of most people being black silhouettes is that I can immediately pick out Yang amongst them because she's the only one in colour.
As Blake left Ruby, so Ruby leaves Jaune. The circle of life. "Where am I supposed to find another nice, quirky girl to talk to?" Exit Jaune, stage left. We briefly glimpse a coloured-in appearing-female character whom he was obscuring from the camera. Is this foreshadowing? Probably, seeing as she looks familiar from his scene in the titles.
Oof. Also, did the animation budget not extend to a new hole in the ground, because between this and "Crater Face" I'm getting the impression that we're meant to think there was one.
Ruby has not recovered as much as I thought from being excoriated by Weiss. While she says so, the camera orbits subtly to reveal Weiss behind her. Weiss still isn't happy. Fortunately, Yang is there for moral support.
"Oh my god, you really exploded." Yes Yang, she told you so herself. Repeatedly.
Weiss, unmoved by Ruby's insistence it was an accident, presents her with a pamphlet entitled (caps as original) "DUST for dummies and other Inadequate Individuals", and rattles off the Schnee Dust Company standard disclaimer from the back. Ruby is unsurprisingly a bit overwhelmed by the bulk of legalese.
"Read this and don't ever speak to me again." Weiss definitely still isn't happy.
Yang attempts to have them reset the relationship. Ruby is receptive; Weiss is not, responding with sarcastic mocking of the idea. Ruby, being the spirit animal my spirit animal wishes it could be, misses the sarcasm and mocking. What Yang might think of this will never be known because at that moment Ozpin begins the commencement speech. It's very short and not very inspirational - in fact, Goodwitch's practical instructions for the immediate future are more inspirational. Ruby and Yang are underwhelmed. What Weiss might think of it will never be known because at that moment Jaune, having also missed the sarcasm and mocking in Weiss earlier describing him as a "cute boy", arrives to flirt. Fortunately we only have to put up with it for one sentence before cut to nightfall; Weiss was already facepalming, so I fear how much she had to put up with in the intervening time.
As Goodwitch told them, this night sees them all bunk in the ballroom. The background characters are now white silhouettes instead of black ones, which is a nice touch - except for the young men we are about to see with character models! Yang is Yang about it, but has an indecipherable reaction when she and Jaune notice each other.
Ruby is still floundering a bit without the friend group she was expecting to still have for something like six years; Jaune counts as a new friend, but "Weiss counts as a negative friend." Yang does not understand that there isn't a well-defined percentage increase when one starts from zero - this is a bugbear of a lot of people who do understand the maths well enough: Percentage change is change (end minus start) divided by start, which is division by zero when start is zero. Yang also doesn't believe in negative friends, but unhelps by instead describing Weiss as a freshly made enemy.
The noise of Blake opening her book is quite loud. I thought cats were stealthy? Then again, I've never actually seen a cat reading a book, so what would I know. Blake is also mostly unreceptive when Yang noisily drags (somewhat literally) Ruby over to try making friends, which as a reader I can completely understand.
"Aren't you that girl that exploded?" Blake. Blake why.
Ruby, out of ideas, almost reintroduces herself as "Crater Face".
Yang: "What are you doing?!" Ruby: "I don't know help me!" Spirit animal. Although maybe I shouldn't say that around the catgirl. Or maybe at all if there are - wait, is that what Faunus means? Folks who can be distinguished by having animal-looking features on an otherwise human-looking phenotype? The 'photo' in the news broadcast had someone with clearly apparent nonhuman ears...
With Blake as without Blake, Yang's help is not helping. Poor Ruby.
Blake finally reaches sufficient bluntness to dissuade Yang. This is still not enough bluntness to get through to Ruby, whom I empathise with greatly; and in turn Ruby's refusal to be ruffled, even when Blake goes full killjoy, gets the latter to lower her guard again.
Yang returns for another round of affectionate strangulation of Ruby, which rapidly turns into a literal cartoon dust cloud fight about which Blake is ambivalent. This persists until Weiss comes over to excoriate them for making a racket when she's trying to sleep, which I can also completely understand. To the surprise of no one, this does not calm the situation.
Do we get different song fragments for each episode's credits? How decadent (affectionate). This one sounds a little more positive, but there's not enough context for me to safely conclude it is positive.
Next time: More than one of the seven deadly sins.
LordDarthYoda
#1 Jenova's Witness
- Location
- The Bottomless Pit
I will point out that is a bow on Blake's head and not cat ears. A lot of first time viewers make that mistake but they definitely were going for the cat girl asthetic.
- Location
- California
Would this be a good time to reveal that the first three seasons of the show weren't made in animation software? It was made in Poser which is... modeling software.
michaelb958
(Verified Michael)
- Location
- Wherever I am, there I am
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I did pick up on the bow:
Hmm... How insensitive is it to adopt the catgirl aesthetic in a world with Faunus?
They said so, even:
That being said, you'd think they'd run the models through some animation software. MLP:FiM was, if I recall correctly, animated in Flash, so there's another head start for background ponies.
- Location
- California
It was Monty Oum's show, and he was a master at making Poser do whatever he wanted. So he presumably saw no reason to alter his normal workflow and slow himself down, and the other animators just had to figure out how to do what he did for the scenes he wasn't working on (which were mainly big impact fight scenes).
Yes, before this he was known for making viral fight videos like Haloid and Dead Fantasy.
Rooster Teeth would sometimes wake up and discover Monty had just, y'know, made a fight scene on his own overnight, over the weekend, or so on.
And 'the other animators' at first was like, half a dozen people, a few of which were his animator friends going in.
Basically starting out we're at a step above 'one or a few person fan animations,' but not yet at the level of 'full action production.'
The one with the annoying fanboys, yes.
Tom Cruise?
Don't worry, he's not called Junior for his age. I don't think that qualifies as a spoiler unless you plan to include the books, and even then it's minor. Like his-
They made a shirt about it!
They used to have more on Youtube, but corporate decided to overrule them.
Volume one had effectively zero budget.
Considering that Poser was made for posing things instead of outright animating them it's not that bad. It's like claymation looking like something that was actually animated.
When I said they had no budget, I meant it.
It's their first time there, they're not used to using it like that yet.
Padding implies they had both parts done before the episode was split.
Enough that a civil rights protest is relevant?
michaelb958
(Verified Michael)
- Location
- Wherever I am, there I am
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Oh no.
I don't really know whether he's pretentious, but I'll give him the drawback of the doubt because of Scientology.
Oh no. Sympathy vanishing.
The small amount of time I've spent on their website implies that merch sales are a primary income stream, so I reckon they'll make a shirt out of anything.
This is a much more positive way of looking at things and I shall endeavour to borrow it.
(thinks of blackface) On the one hand, neither Ruby nor Weiss nor Yang has made a big deal out of it. On the other hand, I'm told it wasn't so long ago that few made a big deal out of blackface.
V01C04 & V01C05 The First Step
michaelb958
(Verified Michael)
- Location
- Wherever I am, there I am
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
V01C04 The First Step
Yeah, Glimpsed was definitely one of Jaune's companions in the titles.
We open with a 'POV character opens eyes' shot. And here we have the other two of Jaune's companions in the titles. One of them is a morning person. The other is not.
Seriously, has she taken a breath? Or moved without teleporting? I don't think so.RWBY character designer probably said:
"Well, not together-together-" Which will stop negative numbers of shippers. Hasbro would later find this out when they wrote the "beeeeeeeeeest frieeeeeeeeeends" episode.
Why are they eating breakfast after brushing their teeth?
"What if we bribe the headmaster? No, that won't work, he has a school." The quality of the comedy is increasing, along with my level of inability to can.
Ren (not energetic) attempts to burst Nora (energetic)'s bubble by stating that "sloths [don't] make a lot of noise". This does not dissuade Nora, for she follows the Pinkie Pie archetype; nothing shall dissuade her from anything. Ren also mishandles his guns (as in firearms) for some reason.
We do not know whether Ruby or Yang think Ren and Nora are or aren't "together-together". Yang is busy trying to convince Ruby that the social phase of Beacon is not over. Ruby, being Ruby, is much more enamoured with the idea of letting Crescent Rose do the talking.
Confirmation that Ruby and Yang have a dad.
"...and secondly, I don't need people to help me grow up; I. drink. milk." Yep, the comedy is improving.
Jaune continues to be the attempted comedic relief, having apparently forgotten where he put his gear. I suspect the locker numbers aren't just boring old sequential-from-one, because there did not look to be 636 lockers; nor 636 students in any scene so far, including when Ozpin was addressing what was implied to be all of them. Or maybe he's misreading the number, which would fit the context. Jaune is also our scene transition device to Weiss trying to get in the good graces of Glimpsed, whose name is Pyrrha and who is apparently famous. Jaune does not cause trouble here, because he walks past without noticing. Weiss does not strike out immediately. Oh no, Weiss is mentally monologuing on a background of thunderclouds. Weiss. Weiss no. Stahp.
"Nothing can come between us now!" monologues Weiss, just in time for the background to dissipate and reveal Jaune between them. He introduces himself to Weiss - fortunately not with his catchphrase - and is shoved out of the way by Pyrrha, who is then shoved out of the way by Jaune, who recommences the flirting. I have a very low cringe threshold, so a lot of dedicated comedy just doesn't work for me; suffice to say I cringe very hard whenever Jaune tries to flirt. Pyrrha rescues her by diverting Jaune's attention onto herself.
Weiss knows exactly who Pyrrha is, and more importantly how good she is at fighting (apparently very). Jaune only knows her from the front of a cereal box, which the animators treat us to, and only after Weiss brings it up. The animation style gags are growing on me a bit. Weiss is quite unimpressed with Pyrrha attempting to shore up Jaune's self-esteem. Weiss is even less impressed with Jaune flirting his way into her personal space; she calls for Pyrrha's help. Something in Pyrrha's colours takes Jaune off to stage left at speed; the sound effects imply it pins him to the far wall. Somebody apologises for something, but I've no idea who (or what).
Goodwitch, over the PA, asks first-year students to report to Beacon Cliff for initiation. Jaune does, indeed, have a Pyrrha-coloured spear through his clothing pinning him to the side of a locker. Pyrrha retrieves it on her way past. The question is, is it a gun, or does it glow funny colours? Jaune laments his failure to Yang and Ruby. His dad's advice is apparently worse than his mum's.
On the cliff, a surprisingly small number of students are gathered for another speech by Ozpin and Goodwitch. Ruby is shocked to hear Ozpin's method of determining partnerships from whom teams will be assembled. Honestly, "first person you make eye contact with after landing" has a lot not going for it. Nora, being Nora, fully expected it.
Ozpin continues his record of not being very good at inspiring speeches. Jaune is shocked by the bluntness with which he is told he, if he makes bad decisions, "will die". Nora just looks overjoyed at being told to destroy everything in her path.
Ozpin invites questions, takes none, and bids the students ready. Jaune is standing on the last ballistic launchpad to fire, to maximise the time the writers can milk Comedy™ from his failure to realise he'll be on a ballistic trajectory with only his own landing strategy to rely on. Naturally, he doesn't have one. Ozpin is so very unbothered.
Roll credits. Today's music is instrumental. Oh I see, the visuals change character themes each episode - Ruby-themed, Weiss-themed, and now Blake-themed.
Next time: Gravity.
V01C05 The First Step, Part Two
This "episode" is four and a half minutes long. C'mon. I guess this is the price we pay for the last one exceeding seven minutes.
Hey wait a minute, the moon in the title sequence isn't shattered!
We open with a peaceful overhead shot of what I recognise from the end of last episode as the Emerald Forest. I also recall that there are about to be Beacon Academy students flying into it. Yep, scratch one bird. "Birdie no!" Oh Ruby.
Landing strategy montage!
- Ruby: Fires several shots to slow herself down with the recoil, then hooks the scythe on a large tree branch and does a few revolutions to burn off more momentum. We'll get back to her.
- Weiss: Double jump, from a glyph that pivots underneath her so she doesn't break her ankles or something.
- Ren: (Nora blurs past him) Some kind of trick that ends up with perpendicular-spiral-ziplining down the outside of a tree trunk.
- Yang: Enjoys flying, jetboosting herself along by firing a gauntlet whenever she gets too low or slow. Did I mention she randomly put sunglasses on just before launch? Eventually she performs the downwards equivalent of wall-jumping between two trees, landing with a combat roll to a run and a "Nailed it".
- Pyrrha: Slices through several bits of tree before combat-rolling to a stop on a high tree branch, now wielding a gun.
- Jaune: No strategy; still tumbling end over end and screaming. Pyrrha sees this through her scope and takes pity, shifting the gun back into her spear (lookit that, it's also a gun) and throws it with recoil assist (although is it recoil if it's for forward propulsion?) with precisely correct timing to generate another Jaune-got-pinned-to-something noise. Seriously, the incredible distance implies incredible aim, timing, and all those other things. "Thank you!" Jaune's (possibly sarcastic) voice is barely audible on the wind. "I'm sorry!" Pyrrha shouts back. Maybe she made the mystery apology last episode; it would work as a brick joke.
Do Not Try This At Home This sequence makes the classic "Superman catches Lois Lane just above the ground" error. As the saying goes, it's not the fall that kills you {{(sweats)}}, it's the sudden stop at the end. The stop here is just as sudden as if Jaune had hit the ground. Assuming he's suspended from a spear stuck in a tree, the sudden stop is less likely to break his legs, but more likely to break his neck: generally less survivable at the best of times, which this isn't.
But back to Ruby, who makes a three-point landing with Crescent Rose already stowed, and starts running through the forest calling internally, and then externally, for Yang. Her inner voice sounds twenty-something years old; her outer voice sounds about two. After a few repetitions, her thoughts turn to other possible partners.
- Jaune: Nice, funny; probably not very good in a fight (hand-drawn Jaune being mauled by hand-drawn wolves).
- Blake: Mysterious, cool, likes books; not very conversational.
- Weiss: Ah h*ck, just made eye contact with her.
After a few moments of walking off, Weiss stops and prepares to call something "stupid-". What exactly she thinks is stupid will never be known, for at that moment she sees Jaune, pinned about four metres (feet-to-ground) up a tree trunk by Pyrrha's spear through the hood of his hoodie (yep, that's neck-breaking if you tried it at home), which is apparently as good as a WRONG WAY / GO BACK road sign.
Suffice to say Jaune is distressed by Weiss leaving and taking Ruby with her. This distress is alleviated by Pyrrha arriving from a different direction, and mostly resurrected when she yanks his chain by throwing one of his attempted flirt lines back at him. I wonder how long she'll let him stew this time around before retrieving her weapon.
Cut to Weiss being mission-focused to the extent of accusing Ruby of being "too slow". Bad idea. She's a bit surprised when Ruby near-instantly moves from 'way behind her' to 'right in front of her'.
As if the Force is imbalanced, Ruby then reverts to dork for a couple of sentences before disappearing in a flash of rose petals. Let's hope that's not still a blood metaphor.
As the rustling of the forest dies down, Weiss assumes she's still in the vicinity:
The camera begins to orbit Weiss, and for a moment it looks like a rose petal comes into view behind her back. It's not a rose petal: as the orbit continues, it's revealed to be one of a pair of glowing red eyes hiding in the bushes. As Weiss realises something is seriously amiss, the camera then orbits the other way, much faster, revealing additional pairs of glowing red eyes. Finally, cut to oh holy h*ck the wolves are no longer poorly-animated and I preferred it when they were. Do not want.
Aaaaand cliffhanger.
Roll credits. I was right, these visuals are Yang-themed. Music still instrumental, but also feels more Yang-themed.
Next time: Oversharing.
Prevents eye contact if she doesn't want it, doesn't it?
People joke she's Canadian for a number of reasons. This is one of them.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
She was called out for being a good fighter, so this is a nice way to back it up
Something can both look cool and be functional, remember the quote from the start of her trailer?I would be extremely surprised if that was her reason
True!
That said, I think her strategy is almost purely in her falling technique- not landing near Rubes so Ruby has to stretch her boundaries some.
V01C06 & V01C07 The Emerald Forest
michaelb958
(Verified Michael)
- Location
- Wherever I am, there I am
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
V01C06 The Emerald Forest
Now back to Yang, calling "Hello?" in a forest. If nobody hears her, has she made a sound? Maybe you should have jetboosted a bit less, bright spark. Something blurs past the camera (entirely out of her sight); it's too black to be Ruby but probably too fast to be anyone else.
Yang is either actually bored, or pretending to be bored to convince herself she's not scared. Any unconfirmed boredom vanishes as she investigates a bush making forest rustling noises, in the hope it's Ruby. Spoiler alert, it's not Ruby, it's a well-animated bonewolf whose pounce she barely evades. Deploying her gun-gauntlets, she taunts it and its friend between attempted attacks (by them). Until they damage her hair, then it's serious and she makes short work of the first one, along with the unfortunate trees (plural) behind it. The second wolf assesses whether this is a fight it really wants to pick, then has its choice removed by Blake attacking it from behind. Blake then gives the camera a 'why me?' look. I'm with Blake on this one; I'm not sure how well I'd fare if I were stuck with Yang for four years. "I coulda taken him," half-protests the latter.
Now back to Weiss, who is less terrified than it seemed from the cliffhanger, but still facing down a lot of bonewolves. Fortunately they seem to be content to wait for her to try something. Which, with proper preparation, she does, setting saber-glow to red and missile-stabbing for - suddenly, Ruby! Weiss frantically discharges the firewave in another direction, adding to the tree casualty count (the evaporation of its canopy is very poorly animated - guess we found where that went). Ruby, distracted by the firewave, takes a claw-swipe to the scythe-gun from their chosen opponent that knocks her back into Weiss. Suffice to say neither of them is impressed with the other. The wolves, however, are a more pressing concern, which they are both entirely prepared to fight until a different burning tree falls almost on top of Ruby. As Weiss drags her out of the incipient forest fire, the wolves howl. Whether they howl in triumph or burny burny pain is a mystery for the ages.
A safe distance from the column of smoke, the argument restarts. Weiss remains quite miffed with Ruby diving into her (Weiss's) charge without warning. "I'm just surprised that someone that talks so much would communicate so little during an encounter." There's got to be an immature joke in there somewhere. "Well, I'm sorry that you need my help to win a fight," retorts Ruby. {{Oof.}} Weiss sarcastically congratulates her on being the "strongest child to sneak your way into Beacon". A very angry Ruby takes out her anger by cutting down the nearest tree in a single stroke of Crescent Rose. The amount of time the camera spends on a single quill drifting down from it as they leave makes me think it's foreshadowing something.
Now back to Jaune and Pyrrha, the latter having graciously permitted the former to tag along. In response to the distant sound of gunfire, Pyrrha says "It seems some of our comrades have encountered the enemy," which is a line that I'd really like to put in a strategy game voice pack. Moments later, she pushes a branch out of the way just long enough for it to snap back and knock Jaune off his feet. It seems that apologising is Pyrrha's other character trait for the moment. She expected him to tank it on his Aura, and is slightly aghast to learn that he clearly doesn't know what that is; a perfect opportunity for us to learn too. I also now notice with the aid of this camera angle that she's wearing earrings-or-similar on loose chains, which seems like a bad idea in a combat zone.
Once upon a time, my sister's then-secondary-school (now there's a long story) was visited by a dance teacher, who was heard at one point complaining about the carpark shredding her car's tyres upon entry. The shredders were of course installed only to shred tyres if they entered via the one-way exit, and this was very clearly signposted. Based on this, my family developed a theory that there were two kinds of people: flowy people, and people who read signs. I bring this up because "Aura is the manifestation of our soul" that "bears our burdens and shields our hearts", which sounds very, very flowy.
As Pyrrha explains Aura for us (and for Jaune), she narrates over Ren, who is being snuck up upon by a gigantic black snake. Except he's fully aware of it, because Aura. Everything has Aura, including animals; but not including monsters, aka Creatures of Grimm (intercut with Ren fighting the massive snake), "the manifestation of anonymity" (quite a way to describe not having a soul?). Ren, now facing certain constriction, deigns to leap out of the way, pull his twin sharpened machine-pistols, and take the fight seriously, putting it out of its misery. Pyrrha explains that despite Grimm being darkness and hunters being the light, hunters have both. Very flowy, and also cue Ren being attacked by a gigantic white snake-Grimm in addition to a second gigantic black snake-Grimm.
Jaune distils this down to the very sign-reader-y "It's like a force field!". (Pyrrha doesn't like that.) Cue Ren demonstrating it by deflecting the black snake-Grimm's major tooth from his palm instead of having his hand impaled like would happen to any of us who tried this at home. He then breaks off both of those teeth and kills the former owner with one.
Pyrrha then proceeds to unlock Jaune's Aura so he can use it as a force field. This process makes me feel uncomfortably voyeuristic.
Apparently he has a lot of it. ...okay, I can't resist: That's what she said.
Ren, who has killed the white snake-Grimm while we weren't looking, is now accosted by a weird noise from somewhere up there. It's Nora, hanging upside-down. "I still don't think that's what sloths sound like," says Ren. Nora's counter-argument is the unassailable "Boop!". And so Chapter 6 ends how Chapter 4 began: with Nora getting in Ren's face.
Roll credits. Today's visual theme is a double feature: Jaune and Pyrrha. No vocals for a few episodes now...
Next time: Nobody expects the Command & Conquer references!
V01C07 The Emerald Forest, Part Two
I see we're doing the seven-and-four episode length again.
Goodwitch walks out to join Ozpin on the cliff edge, both wielding tablet computers with which to observe the initiation. So Weiss couldn't have gotten away with pretending she didn't see Ruby, then. Goodwitch observes that Nora Valkyrie and Lie Ren are apparently the last partner-pair to pair and she can't imagine them getting along. (chuckles in dramatic irony) She is also skeptical that Jaune has any idea what he's doing, even if his documents say he does. Ozpin is only half-listening; he's watching Weiss and Ruby have the dismounted version of the stereotypical 'please just ask somebody for directions' argument, except there's nobody to ask for directions and they didn't even like each other when they first met
Now back to Blake and Yang, who don't just actually know where they're going, they've already gotten there. From the camera angle, the slope they walk down is only ruled out of being a cliff by the fact they walk down it, and even then it must be a really steep slope. The "relics" - somewhat non-tiny chess pieces - are not quite as impressive-looking as I was expecting, which might actually be a stylistic choice rather than just poor animation. (It has been suggested to me that I should instead be commending the animators for accomplishing this much in a program that was never designed for full animation; this is a positive viewpoint that I shall endeavour to borrow. From now on, please read all my "poorly-animated" jokes as affectionate rather than derogatory unless I specify otherwise.)
Now back to Jaune and Pyrrha. Jaune thinks they might have found where they're meant to be going; we know he's wrong. The cave he's found has artwork outside the entrance that depicts a small army in combat with a giant scorpion. Pyrrha, of course, follows him into the cave. Right as it seems she might be getting through to him on the matter of 'this might not be it', Jaune trips over, sending the torch that is their only source of illumination into a puddle that extinguishes it. Now Jaune says they should perhaps turn around, but Pyrrha senses warmth and sends them onward.
Yang picks a chess piece - a knight, aka "cute little pony". Blake accedes, and piles on the dramatic irony by suggesting that the ruined temple containing the relics is easy to find.
Jaune and Pyrrha find a dangling glowing thing, which Jaune concludes must be the relic they're looking for. It's a bit sharp, so I have my misgivings. After failing to grab it from the ground, he jumps and grabs onto it. This awakens the big bag of Nope™ to which it is attached. (Cue a 'girly scream' joke back at the temple.) Daylight reveals it's a giant scorpion. Are you surprised? I'm not. Jaune just dangles helplessly from what turns out to be its stinger, scream-sob-pleading for Pyrrha to help him. It's kinda getting on my nerves. I'm with Goodwitch - Jaune clearly isn't adequately prepared in practice despite being so on paper.
{{I'm finding there's no better antidote to liking Jaune than canon Jaune. This may also apply to Yang, but being informed about Junior's conduct in the books have dramatically decreased my sympathy for Junior.}}
Pyrrha firstly tells him to "Whatever you do, don't let-" (Jaune lets go at exactly the right moment to be flung over the horizon) "-go." So secondly will have to wait. And he doesn't even have Pyrrha to gift him a landing strategy this time - hopefully his Aura will protect him. Pyrrha then gives the camera a sheepish smile and flees the scene fast enough that those might even be green rose petals left behind, whether to find Jaune or just to find some kind of backup to help her fight a giant scorpion.
Yang hears something, implied to be Jaune. Discussion of what they should do about it is preempted by
Roll credits. Today's credits visuals are Nora and Ren. Come to think of it, all credits artwork but Ruby and Weiss has been mainly white silhouettes of the characters; Ruby's was of course a rose, while Weiss got a stylised drawing of the stage from her trailer. Ruby and Weiss were also the only ones so far to have vocals in their credits music. It remains to be seen whether all of this is intentional or just a result of having no budget.
Next time: Big Bird.